Am I a Buddhist?

I’m going to write a few posts to attempt to
explain what Buddhist-Christian-Quaker means to me. In this
post I’ll focus primarily on the Buddhist part of that.

Let me begin by clarifying that I have been a
Christian for 30+ years. I became a follower of Jesus as a
young adult in the mid-1980’s (while traveling through Texas as the
bassist for a heavy metal band–but that’s a story for another
post). I prayed the “Sinner’s Prayer” to become “born again”
in a church parking lot in Beaumont, Texas. For many years
after that I attended fundamentalist non-denominational charismatic
evangelical churches. I met my wife at church. We
raised our son within the evangelical culture.

After about two decades in the fundamentalist
Christian world, my wife and I left to start a house-church and
then, over the course of a few years, became Quakers. Our
son, by that time a young adult off at college, had already joined
the growing ranks of “the Nones” (people who describe their
religious affiliation as “none”). Being a Quaker Christian
enabled me to gain some distance from my fundamentalist past and
opened the door to contemplative spirituality. I began
learning about other forms of Christianity and also about other
religions (not just for the purpose of winning theological debates,
but rather to simply learn and appreciate the wisdom they had to
offer). I had spent most of my Christian years fairly
ignorant (and, frankly, somewhat fearful) of other faiths, while
simultaneously smug and sure in the correctness of my provincial
fundamentalist ghetto.

Among the many world-religions I studied, one
of them unexpectedly “clicked” with me in a big way:
Buddhism. That scared me a bit at first. I didn’t want
to become one of those cautionary tales I had heard so many times
at church: “Daniel went to seminary and lost his faith in Jesus and
became an apostate and now he is hopelessly lost.” But then I
read (and re-read, and re-read again) Paul Knitter’s book Without
Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian. Knitter had been a
Catholic priest, a student of the eminent theologian Karl Rahner,
and then an esteemed professor of theology himself–first at Xavier
University in Cincinnati and now as emeritus at Union Theological
Seminary in New York City. “Buddhism has helped me take
another and deeper look at what I believe as a Christian,” he
wrote. “Many of the words that I had repeated or read throughout my
life started to glow with new meaning.” This was the
experience I was having as I was drawn toward the teachings and
practices (the Dharma) of the Buddha. I could not embrace
certain ideas such as reincarnation and karmic reward/punishment in
future lives, but I discovered that these ideas were not intrinsic
to the Buddha’s core teachings. Stephen Batchelor’s books,
especially Buddhism Without Beliefs helped me sort this
out.

So, does that make me a Buddhist? Let me
hedge a little further: Some Buddhists would say that there is
really no such thing as Buddhism. “Buddhism” is a term, an
“ism”, invented by Western scholars in the 19th century to
categorize the 2,500 year-old movement of people practicing the
Dharma. We Western scholars love to categorize, and so
“Buddhism” was placed alongside Christianity, Islam, Judaism,
Hinduism, Taoism and other world-religions for the sake of
comparison and contrast. Many highly regarded Buddhist
teachers today, such as Thich Nhat Hanh, although they will use the
de facto descriptor of “Buddhism,” prefer to speak of “practicing
the Dharma.” That seems to align more closely with the way
Buddhists described themselves throughout history. I like how
that descriptor places the emphasis on practice–what one
does–rather than on merely subscribing to a set of beliefs or
doctrines.

At this stage in the game the descriptors
“Buddhism” and “Buddhist” have become established nomenclature and
are unlikely to disappear.

Bhante Gunaratana, in his book Mindfulness in
Plain English, wrote:

“Buddhism does not advocate faith in the sense
of believing something because it is written in a book, attributed
to a prophet, or taught to you by some authority figure. The
meaning of faith here is closer to confidence. It is knowing that
something is true because you have seen it work, because you have
observed that very thing within yourself. In the same way, morality
is not a ritualistic obedience to a code of behavior imposed by an
external authority. It is rather a healthy habit pattern that you
have consciously and voluntarily chosen to impose upon yourself
because you recognize its superiority to your present
behavior.”

Can being a Buddhist coexist with being
something else, such as a Christian? From the Buddhist
perspective it certainly can. Zen monk Shunryu Suzuki wrote,
“If you’re not a Buddhist you think there are Buddhists and
non-Buddhists, but if you’re a Buddhist you realize everybody’s a
Buddhist–even the bugs.” In a future post I’ll explore this
same question from a Christian perspective.

The word Buddha is a title which means
“awakened one.” The goal of practicing the Dharma is to
become awakened, just like the man Gautama did 2,500 years ago and
like many men and women purportedly have since. Therefore to
be a Buddhist means to be an “awake-ist” and Buddhism is literally
“awake-ism.” Through mindful practices–particularly
meditation–one becomes awake to aspects of reality such as
impermanence, dependent origination, emptiness, non-self,
interbeing, etc. The experiential awareness of these things
leads to greater peace and contentment and integrity in this
life–here and now. “The buddha-dharma is about examining our
lives, our behavior, our speech, and the means by which we earn our
keep on this planet–and how all these activities connect with
everything else,” writes Steve Hagen in Buddhism Plain and Simple,
“We have only one choice. Either we awaken, or we do
not.” In other words, reality is what it is. Buddhism
is about becoming experientially aware of reality and living one’s
life accordingly.

So, do I practice the Dharma? Yes.
Do I love and follow Jesus? Yes. Am I a
Christian? I believe so. Am I a Buddhist? I
believe so.

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